White liberal racism went full mask off this week when Amy Cooper, the viral white woman in the Central Park video, called the cops on Christian Cooper and is recorded saying, “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life.” This incident has made some (definitely not all) liberals across the country re-evaluate their white privilege and their relationship to the systemic oppression against people of color.
Cooper is a white liberal democrat, not a Trump supporter like many assumed. White liberals have advocated for the idea of intersectional freedom while being complicit in the systems that oppress people of color. It is basically a veil, a marketing scheme, a PR piece — whatever you want to call it — to hide behind the reality of having the ability to weaponize their privilege.
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While it is easy to focus attention solely on Cooper, it is important to bring the attention back home to local liberals, wherever you may be. Here in Texas we have an example of Democratic leadership that represents white liberal cognitive dissonance.
Mary Duty, chair of the McLennan County Democratic Party since 2014 in Texas, not only has history being a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (picture to the left, first paragraph), but the restaurant she owns with her conservative husband, Roland Duty, regularly hosts Sons of Confederate Veterans — Waco meetings. The restaurant displays various flags including the Confederate flag, “Come and Take It,” the U.S. flag, the Iraq flag, and others considered part of “decor.”
Mary has defended their restaurant by saying that they also have received backlash for supporting Planned Parenthood. Even though her husband, Roland, is a conservative, Mary did tell the Waco Tribune Herald that she “loved former Senate candidate Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, thinks Pete Buttigieg is brilliant, considers Joe Biden an elder statesman and, if pushed to make a pick, would enjoy seeing Elizabeth Warren sworn in as the 46th U.S. president.”
Another instance of Mary’s liberalism was in April 2011 when Roland told the newspaper that he thinks states’ rights caused the Civil War and the journalist noted that “To her [Mary’s] credit, Mary quickly corrects him when he does this.” Even Roland, her husband who calls the Civil War an act of northern aggression, describes Mary as a centrist.
Despite Mary correcting Roland about the truth of the Civil War in the 2011 article, earlier that month Mary went and erected a tent for shade at Felix Robertson’s gravesite, a general in the Confederate States Army, during Decoration Day celebrations. Even though Mary knows well enough that the Civil War was a fight against the enslavement of black people and is willing to correct her husband on the topic, she still has a history of participating in events that celebrate the Confederacy.
This is an exceptional display of hypocrisy that white liberalism accepts. While Mary is able to use her history teacher career as a front for her work with Confederacy groups and celebrations, it is obvious that her historical work surrounding the Civil War has not honored the black lives that were enslaved and brutalized. Instead, her historical work has uplifted the soldiers that were at the frontlines of “states’ rights.”
How can we make political inroads locally confronting these issues if our leadership has a history of Confederate sympathizing? How can we make political inroads when there’s a lack of backbone in standing up for people of color and the systemic issues they face?
Amy Cooper is a national instance of white liberalism weaponizing white privilege against black people, and in this specific case, black men. It is not enough to consider Cooper’s actions as a one-time fluke when we have Mary Duty as another microcosm of white liberalism. She is known to routinely hold liberal-type meetings in her restaurant that holds space for those who white-wash and romanticize Southern culture during the Civil War.
Neutrality is cowardice and complicity in the face, or backdrop, of oppression. White liberals continue to brush it off and maintain positions of power that erase the truth of history and the present.
